Einstein’s Brain’s Thoughts

Last updated on: April 25, 2007 at 3:52 pm by David Hayward

Einstein’s Brain’s Thoughts 2007-04-25T15:52:17-04:00 David Hayward

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This post is basically a collection of quotes I’ve extracted from this article on “Einstein and Faith” in Time magazine. I find them profound and important in today’s debate between atheists and theists. For one of the most brilliant scientific minds (his actual brain is preserved!), he still, as we shall see, had some kind of belief in “God”, and even considered himself “religious” to some degree. Shouldn’t this give us all pause, both atheists and theists alike? Take a fascinating read:

The religious inclination lies in the dim consciousness that dwells in humans that all nature, including the humans in it, is in no way an accidental game, but a work of lawfulness that there is a fundamental cause of all existence.

When Einstein was asked if he was religious, he calmly answered,

Yes, you can call it that… Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. That that extent I am, in fact, religious.

When asked if he believed in God, he replied:

I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the language in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws.

He goes on…

To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.

Anyway, I appreciate Einstein’s approach that should be, I think, a lesson to all of us. I think the word is humility… humility towards all that we don’t and can’t know. I am impressed with rationality, but only to a point. There is something beyond what we know, and I think Einstein did his best to articulate that in a humble manner. I respect that.

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